Prevention and combating cyber bullying and internet violence among youth

Prevention and combating cyber bullying and internet violence among youth
– manual for youth workers –
mom reached out to my school advisor who reminded us that my school has a code of conduct
policy that includes a cyberbullying section that all student sign.
It states – “Definition – Bullying is the creation of a hostile environment by conduct or verbal
threats, intimidation or abuse that has or would have the effect of unreasonably and
substantially interfering with a student’s educational performance, opportunities or benefits,
or mental, or emotional, or physical well-being; or conduct, verbal threats, intimidation, or
abuse that reasonably causes or would reasonably be expected to cause a student to fear for
his or her physical safety. Cyberbullying, including electronic comments posted in e-mails or
instant messages, or on social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter, or in blogs, etc.
The School encourages all members of the school community to report all incidents of bullying,
regardless of who the offender may be. The School will take prompt, reasonable action to
prevent, investigate, and remedy bullying. Any student who believes that he or she has been the
victim of bullying shall report the incident(s) to the Principal, Grade-Level Dean, Advisor,
Counselor, School Nurse, or School Psychologist.”
We all came to the decision that this was actual cyberbullying and decided to report this incident
to ensure my safety and to try and better our school community and educate others about
cyberbullying.
I then left for summer camp for 3 weeks without my phone and got to escape the toxic social
media world. When I returned, I learned that the school had contacted the mother of this girl.
She defended her actions by sharing with them a screenshot of the mean post that I had written
way back in January. Although I didn’t know it, what I had written came back to haunt me and
she said it is the reason she decided to write those terrible thing about me on social media.
I have thought about this a lot and realize now how important it is to be careful about what you
put online. I have learned that even though people forgive and forget, things stay on the internet
forever and can come back to haunt you later in life. It is my hope that my story will help other
people to understand that even if you feel like an innocent victim, there are always two sides to
every story. The internet is definitely not the right place to let your emotions and angry feelings
towards a person or situation out. I was very hurt by this experience and I know many of the
other people involved have also been hurt and upset. Recently, the girl who wrote all those
things about me and I got together. She apologized to me for the things she had posted and we
decided that moving forward we would both do our best to look out for each other and only
29